Before the Saturday premiere of his new five-part TV series, Brave New World with Stephen Hawking , the modern icon of the science community took some time to discuss what he thinks is humanity's number one priority. According to him, humanity must find a way to get off this planet that we messed up and figure out how to colonize other planets.

According to Hawking, we are entering a very dangerous period in our history. Not only is our population growing, but our consumption of resources as well. Even though our immense technological advancement gives us the ability to change the environment, selfishness and agression are just in our DNA code as a survival instinct. He predicts that it's going to be hard to avoid some kind of global disaster in the next 100 years.If things are that bad now, what's going to happen in thousands or millions of years? Hawking's exact words were "Our only chance of long-term survival is not to remain lurking on planet Earth, but to spread out into space"

Hawking has always been in favor of "personed" space flight over probes. He was always a huge supporter of its development, because it will inevitably lead to the development of technology necessary for humanity to establish extraterrestrial colonies. These ideas about mankind's survival will be prominently featured in Brave New World after the show debuts this Saturday on Discovery HD.